Selective call receivers, such as pagers, alert a user when a message has been received. In conventional pagers, received messages are stamped with a date and a time corresponding thereto and are stored in a memory. The pager alerts the user that a message has been received and either automatically or manually, upon selection by the user, presents the user with the message. At a later time, if the user desires to be presented with a particular message, he must scroll through the messages stored in memory until he locates the particular message. Although the number of messages that could be stored is theoretically limitless, typical pagers store only a predetermined number of messages. When the predetermined number of messages has been stored, each new message is saved in the memory, while the oldest stored message is deleted from the memory. To an extent, the user is able to save designated messages in the memory by directing the pager to protect the designated messages, thereby preventing the deletion of the designated messages from the memory. The user may not, however, protect more than the predetermined number of messages that can be stored, and, once the stored protected messages have taken all of the available space in the memory, no new messages may be stored or protected. In pagers with smaller memories, the user may perform the above mentioned operations with relative ease. However, performing basic pager operations, such as recalling messages and determining which messages are protected, may be problematic for the user when the predetermined number of messages that can be stored is high, i.e., the memory of the pager is of sufficient size to store a large number of messages. In this case, for example, the user may not know which messages are in danger of deletion or even which messages are stored. If the user attempts to locate a particular message, he may have to scroll through a large number of stored messages before the message is presented, thereby wasting time. After scrolling through the stored messages, the user may even realize that an important message has been deleted unintentionally. Such essential pager operations may be rendered unmanageable when the size of the pager memory is large enough to store more than a small number of messages.
Some conventional pagers are able to identify different types of messages, e.g., alphanumeric or numeric. The different types of messages may be identified in a number of ways, such as by an address of the incoming message. However, the user is unable to determine the type of received message without being presented with the message. This may inconvenience the user, for example, if he prefers to read only particular types of messages during certain times. This situation could arise if the pager types are categorized into work related messages and non-work related messages. The user may desire to read the work related messages while at the office during the day and the non-work related messages during the evening. Unfortunately, the user typically must read the message to determine whether the message is work related or non-work related. The user could begin to read a message before deciding that he would rather read the message at a later time, thereby wasting time.
Thus, what is needed is a method for better configuring the presentation of received messages and types of received messages based upon time.